DAWN: A Musical Event within No Man’s Land

June 3, 2010

A unique musical event composed by long-time Boltanski collaborator Franck Krawczyk, DAWN will be performed to accompany the monumental installation No Man’s Land.Argento Chamber Ensemble will perform this one-time-only event from within the installation—moving through the drill hall and balconies as they perform—June 3 at 7:30pm. There will be an open rehearsal on June 2 at 6pm.

Franck Krawczyk is a pianist and composer. His masters are Serge Petitgirard and Claude Helffer for piano and Philippe Manoury and Gilbert Amy for composition. Very early on in his career he was discovered by the Paris Autumn Festival. He has composed many pieces for piano, violoncello, string quartets and ensembles. In 2000, he was awarded the Hervé Dugardin and Sacem Prize for Ruines,for orchestra. He transcribed works from Vivaldi, Chopin, Wagner, Schoenberg and others for the Accentus/Laurence Equilbey Choir, as well as MittelEuropa pieces for the violoncellist Sonia-Atherton (CD and DVD c/o Naïve: Chants d’Est). He teaches chamber music at Conservatoire National Supérieur for Music and Dance in Lyon, France

He is currently working on creating new music forms for theatre (Je ris de me voir si belle, 2005 with J. Brochen), for readings (Les Limbes, Absence, with E. Ostrovski), for video (Private Joke with F. Salès) and for dance (Purgatorio-In Visione, 2008 with E. Greco and P.C. Scholten).

The creation of Polvere, a musical composition and live performance event has been presented within Boltanski’s installation, Personnes, at Le Grand Palais/ Monumenta in early 2010. Today, the story continues with Dawn, an entirely new composition and live musical event, created specifically for the surrounds of Boltanski’s installation, No Man’s Land, in Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Park Avenue Armory, New York.

ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE

The Argento Chamber Ensemble is the performance arm of the Argento New Music Project. Consisting of nine dedicated members, the ensemble regularly expands to perform and record chamber orchestra works of up to thirty musicians, and has established a reputation for delivering unforgettable performances.

The Ensemble has toured widely in the US and abroad in festivals including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the International Festival of Spectral Music in Istanbul, Turkey, the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York, Sounds French Festival in New York, The Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland, and the International Festival of Electro-acoustic music, Shanghai. Tours to Asia and the Middle East included collaborations with non-Western musicians such as singer Kani Karaça.

The group has worked closely with leading composers such as Pierre Boulez, Tania Leon, Tristan Murail, Elliott Carter, Philippe Hurel, Gerard Pesson, Joshua Fineberg, and Philippe Leroux, and has collaborated with younger emerging composers internationally and at leading universities such as Columbia, Princeton, and Stonybrook.

The Ensemble’s first recording, featuring the music of Tristan Murail, was released in January of 2007 on the AEON label with distribution through Harmonia Mundi. The recording immediately received critical acclaim worldwide. The ensemble has also recorded surround sound installation works, and has produced a complete video and audio recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire for online education.

Argento’s reputation has been the result of its long history as a chamber ensemble since 2000, demanding technical preparation, and a probing interpretive commitment to the music.